Anthem for Jackson Dawes Read Online Free PDF Page A

Maybe it was the same with Mrs Lemon.
    â€˜I’ll tell him,’ she promised.
    There was a loud noise suddenly, a long drawn out wail, as if something horrible was happening to a baby in another room, then a phone rang and rang.Just outside her door there was the scramble of feet, some loud voices, a stab of laughter, then silence once more.
    â€˜Wish I didn’t have to be on a children’s ward. Wish they’d let me be on an adult ward.’
    â€˜No, you don’t,’ came the reply. ‘Full of old codgers. You wouldn’t want that. Do nothing but complain, the lot of them. Nurse this, Nurse that. I should know. I was one of them.’ He laughed then. ‘Give them a right runaround, I did, even with my wrists in plaster.’
    There was another gap full of silence, where maybe she was supposed to laugh, and allow him to tell her again about breaking his wrists doing the hokey-cokey.
    More muttering in the background.
    â€˜
Yes, yes! I will …
Mrs Lemon wants to know if they’ve done anything to you yet?’
    Megan didn’t know where to start. There was so much, she couldn’t remember what order it had all happened in, everything confusing, some of it just a bit frightening. ‘I’ve got a drip,’ she said, gazing up at the bag, the metal stand with its wheels, all part of her now, of this world she had to be in.
    â€˜That’ll be for the pop, I suppose,’ Grandad said, as if she wasn’t almost fourteen but still five.
    â€˜For my
chemo
, dafty.’
    â€˜Ah, that. Suppose it’s better down a tube than having to drink the stuff. Tastes like dandelion and durdock, apparently. You’d hate it. Which arm?’
    It wasn’t in her arm. The end of it, or the beginning of it, she couldn’t decide which, was in her chest, burrowed under the skin near her collarbone. It stopped above her heart. The rest of it coiled like a tiny snake under a dressing, then out to hang between her and the drip stand.
    â€˜Jackson’s got one as well,’ Megan said. ‘It’s a central line or something.’
    Grandad sounded impressed. ‘
Central line
,’ Mrs Lemon was informed. ‘Means you can use both hands for doing your hair and your nails with. You girls! Always fussing with your hair.’
    He laughed. Megan laughed. He was trying to cheer her up, and she wanted him to think that he had succeeded. Grandad began to cough, which signalled that this had been a long phone call and his voice was tired, or he was just gripping the phone, the way he always did, had worn out his fingers.
    â€˜There now,’ he said, when the coughing stopped, ‘best be going, Pet Lamb. Kiss, night-night,’ as if she was little again.
    â€˜Kiss, night-night,’ Megan said, feeling as little as anything.
    She waited for him to put down the phone.
    No point in spoiling things. Best not to tell him that her hair might fall out with the chemo, that one day she might be as bald as Jackson.

Three
    Good guys versus bad guys. Chemo versus Cancer. All happening in her veins and arteries, all heading off for that place in her head where things had gone wrong. Megan wondered if Good always won over Bad, the way it did in films and fairy stories.
    It was late; it was dark. She should have been asleep. Instead, she lay listening to the hospital, the noises from the ward, the sounds from outside, the baby who seemed to have cried on and off for hours in a room further down the corridor.
    Night-time was all so different.
    Her door was half open. Megan didn’t want to be shut out of everything that was going on, preferring the wedge of pale light which leaned in and took the edge off the darkness.
    The nurses’ voices were subdued, yet they still seemed to sing out, with nothing to mask them, no everyday bustle. There was hardly anyone about, no trolleys, no wheelchairs, no toddlers trying to escape.
    The ring of phones haunted the